From Mechanisms to Mathematical Models and Back to Mechanisms: Quantitative Mechanistic Explanations

Abstract

Despite the philosophical clash between deductive-nomological and mechanistic accounts of explanation, in scientific practice, both approaches are required in order to achieve more complete explanations and guide the discovery process. I defend this thesis by discussing the case of mathematical models in systems biology. Not only such models complement the mechanistic explanations of molecular biology by accounting for poorly understood aspects of biological phenomena, they can also reveal unsuspected ‘black boxes’ in mechanistic explanations, thus prompting their revision while providing new insights about the causal-mechanistic structure of the world.